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View Coin
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United States Cleveland, OH 1920
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Bronze 76mm 1920-DATED BRONZE THE WARNER & SWASEY CO. CLEVELAND, OHIO # 297 ON EDGE
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NGC MS 65
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OVERVIEW
The Warner & Swasey Company designed and built the 36" Refractor at the University of California's Lick Observatory near San Jose, CA. Their primary business was in manufacturing milling machines, lathes, boring machines, and drilling machines for industry. But in 1881, Warner & Swasey ventured into building astronomical telescopes as a second line-of-business. The first prominent telescope they built was the 36" Lick Refractor; the largest telescope in the world when it was completed in 1888. This bronze medal commemorates Warner & Swasey's 40th Corporate Anniversary in 1920 and their engineering achievements that created this historic telescope.
Victor David Brenner, the designer of the U.S. Lincoln penny, was the medalist who created this medal. The obverse shows the two founders of the Warner & Swasey Company, Worcester Reed Warner and Ambrose Swasey. The signature of V. D. Brenner is also inscribed on the obverse. The reverse has an image of the Lick Refractor that was derived from an 1889 Warner & Swasey lithograph of this telescope (see Library of Congress Control# 2013645277 for this lithograph).
THE LICK REFRACTOR IN 1920
The depiction of the Lick Refractor on this Warner & Swasey Medal is quite accurate and its details show some key features found on the actual telescope in 1920. The features that can be seen in this medal are described below:
This 57-foot telescope is constructed with four main sections of tubing that are bolted to the telescope's equatorial mount. At the top end of this optical tube, a lens holder supports two, 36" diameter objective lenses that were completed by Alvan Clark & Sons in 1886. This premier American optical company manufactured the lenses for some of the largest refracting telescopes in the world during the 19th Century.
The eyepiece end of this optical tube has several small ship-wheels that the astronomer turned to make minor adjustments to the aim of the telescope. Some of these wheels are mechanically connected by shafts to the triangular-shaped tangent arm that is located near the midpoint of the optical tube. This tangent arm changes the telescope's aim about the declination axis in fine smooth movements, as the astronomer rotates the ship wheels. A finder telescope, with a wide optical field-of-view, is also installed near the astronomer to help locate the celestial object of interest.
The Warner & Swasey Medal also shows a small stack of counterweights mounted near each end of the optical tube. These counterweights allow an astronomer to precisely balance the telescope about its declination axis, depending on whether an eyepiece or an instrument is attached to the telescope.
The astronomer and the two people sitting in the chairs are on top of an innovative floor that can be hydraulically elevated, depending on the tilt of the telescope. Thus, the astronomer can stand comfortably on the floor to view through the telescope's eyepiece, instead of having to stand on a ladder to do so. This floor can be raised up to the height of the catwalk, where the two people are standing. The two, vertical, lattice-like structures (to the left and to the right of the telescope pier) contain the counterweights and parts of the rack-and-pinion gear mechanism that guide and level this floor as it moves up or down.
The spiral staircase alongside the pier provides access to the platform where the telescope's equatorial mount is located. An astronomer standing on this platform can easily move this 12.5-ton telescope by turning the small ship-wheels located on the sides of this equatorial mount. This mount also has several spoke-wheels with numbered graduation marks that show the telescope's orientation with respect to the celestial coordinates. These coordinates (declination and right ascension) are used to aim the telescope to the desired celestial object for viewing. To aim the telescope, the astronomer would read the coordinates from the spoke wheels while the telescope is being moved with the ship wheels.
The staircase also provides access to the telescope's tracking mechanism inside the pier. This mechanism drives the telescope to follow a celestial object as the Earth rotates. Before using the Lick Refractor, an astronomer would climb the spiral staircase to the top of the pier and pull up a set of 810-pound weights that powers an escapement (similar to the mechanism found in some grandfather clocks or cuckoo clocks). As these weights descend by gravity to drive the escapement, the telescope moves at the proper rate to follow the object in the sky. Approximately every two hours, the astronomer would climb up the stairs to pull up the weights again to re-power the tracking mechanism. This mechanism can be seen in the top rectangular opening of the pier in the Warner & Swasey Medal.
Although it is not apparent in this medal, the tomb of James Lick is located just beneath the floor and behind where the two people are sitting. In 1874, he donated $700,000 to the University of California to build the largest telescope and the first permanent mountaintop observatory in the world. Lick was the wealthiest man in California when he passed away in 1876. His final wish was to be buried in the base of the pier supporting the Lick Refractor, where he has been since 1887.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
It is unknown how many of these medals were struck by the Medallic Art Company for Warner & Swasey in 1920, but each medal was inscribed with a unique serial number on its edge. The above specimen is Serial# 297. For an interactive magnified view of this particular medal, please enter NGC Certification# 3971249-001 and Grade 65 into the "Verify NGC Certification" feature on the NGC website (www.ngccoin.com).
Today, known public specimens of this medal are at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Accession# 1920.272) and at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City (Accession# X1180.3). The California Institute of Technology Archives, the Princeton University Library, and the University of California, Santa Cruz also have specimens of this medal in their collections.
Photographs of this commemorative medal also appeared in the following publications during 1920:
1) "The Warner & Swasey Company: 1880 - 1920" was a book distributed to the employees of Warner & Swasey to celebrate their company's 40th Anniversary in May 1920.
2) The July 1920 issue of "Mechanical Engineering", from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), has a brief article about the successful 40-year business partnership between Worcester Reed Warner and Ambrose Swasey (both men were also past-presidents of ASME).
3) The October 1920 "Annual Report of the Western Reserve Historical Society" acknowledged Ambrose Swasey for his gift of one of these 40th Anniversary medals to this organization.
FINAL REMARKS
This 40th Anniversary Medal celebrates the Warner & Swasey Company's contributions to American industry and astronomy during the late-1800s to the early-1900s. Although this company finally ended its 112 years of operation in 1992, the Lick Refractor and other notable telescopes made by this firm continue to serve astronomers today. Victor David Brenner's beautiful bronze medal honors the two founders of this American company and the pioneering 36" Lick Refractor they built for the University of California.
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